A quiet little spot where Rod Mollise shares his adventures and misadventures...

Sunday, March 23, 2014

Burnham’s

Unless you
are the greenest of greenhorn astronomers, the wettest behind the ears novice
imaginable, you know what I mean by “Burnham’s.” Burnham’s Celestial Handbook, muchachos. The three volume book once
considered amateur astronomy’s premier guide to the deep sky.

Naturally,
as the years have rolled on following the Handbook’s publication in 1978, books
that go deeper and have more deep sky objects in their pages, like Kepple and
Sanner’s The Night Sky Observer’s Guide
and Skiff and Luginbuhl’s Observing Handbook and Catalogue of Deep Sky Objects, have displaced it. As the 21st century bumbles on, even those guides
have been somewhat replaced—by computer programs, naturally.

The
situation with The Night Sky Observer’s
Guide and the Skiff – Luginbuhl book, is analogous to the one with printed
star atlases. The deepest print atlas, The
Millennium Star Atlas, shows one million stars and over eight thousand deep
sky objects. But… The freeware planetarium program Cartes du Ciel not only prints charts that are legible and usable,
if not nearly as pretty as those in Millennium, it blows the doors off the
printed atlas in object counts. A basic CdC installation might contain one
million deep sky objects and tens of millions of stars. A book of printed
charts can only go to deep and remain practical to use.

So it is
with observing guides as well. Deep sky “planner” programs like SkyTools 3, Deep Sky Planner, Astroplanner,
and Deepsky offer millions of
objects, and go beyond the bare facts of names, sizes and magnitudes. SkyTools 3, for example, says this about
M13 in addition to the “just the facts ma’m” data:

On this night NGC 6341 is best visible between 03:35 and
06:47, with the optimum view at 06:14. Look for it in Hercules, high in the sky
in moonlight. It is detectable visually in the Celestron Nexstar 11. Use the
Panoptic 22mm for optimum visual detection.

In the following 30 days this object is easy visually on
March 23 through April 13, with the best view coming on March 31. NGC 6341
passes high overhead at Chiefland, Florida. It is best viewed from mid May
through late October, with the best evening viewing in early August.

Most
planning programs also offer images and charts for every object in their
libraries (you may have to download the pictures of all but the brightest
objects, but that is easy). Deepsky, even
has extracts from the logs of renowned amateur observers like Barbara
Wilson. Overall, there is not too much even the best book can give you that a
planning program can’t. Well, that is almost
true. There is an exception: Burnham’s Celestial Handbook. It’s
different, going beyond facts and appearances and offering a unique,
aesthetically - oriented take on the sky that has yet to be duplicated by any
computer program or book.

Burnham’s is
different because its author was
different. There is no doubt Robert Burnham Junior was a genius at observing
and telescopes. Unfortunately, as is sometimes the case with people gifted for
a particular thing and also obsessed by that thing, that got in the way of a
successful life and career.

That isn't always true, of course. Clyde Tombaugh was probably an even more gifted
observer, but he was a different kind of cat, a down-to-earth farm boy who, in
the fashion of young Americans his time, the 1930s, was dead set on improving
himself. His exploits as a teen amateur astronomer got him a job at Lowell
Observatory, where he went on to discover Pluto, but that was just the
beginning. He soon got himself Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the
University of Kansas, went to work at White Sands Missile Range, and had a long
and distinguished teaching career at New Mexico State University.

Bob Burnham
was, yeah, different. Today, we’d probably call him “borderline autistic.” He
was extremely shy. Despite being a
huge name in amateur astronomy, he was almost completely unknown to us amateurs.
His reserve wouldn’t allow him to associate with us, much less speak at clubs
or star parties. Other than his writing in the Handbook, all most of us knew of him came from a sad letter he wrote to Sky and Telescope in 1982 bemoaning his treatment by his publisher.

Like
Tombaugh, Burnham came to the attention of Lowell Observatory as a young man—after
discovering a comet at age 26. He was
hired to assist in a particular project, the Proper Motion Survey, beginning in
1958. In addition to his work obtaining and blinking images for this massive study of
stellar proper motion, Burnham busied himself with several subsidiary and
(natch) esoteric interests, like collecting ancient coins. Shortly after coming to Lowell, he even discovered another comet (with his own 8-inch scope). Lowell was his life,
with the observatory even providing him with humble living quarters.

Bob Burnham
would probably have remained an unknown save for his Big Idea. He would write a
great guide to the constellations, to their stars and deep sky objects, for
amateur astronomers. Something like what Admiral Smyth and Reverend Webb did in
the 19th Century. It would go beyond anything that had come before, however, covering
deep sky objects, especially, in meticulous detail. The idea for what Burnham
originally called his “celestial survey” came to him before he moved to Lowell,
but as he settled in there, he began to work on it furiously.

Thus began Burnham’s
life’s work. His Celestial Handbook eventually went on to comprise three fat volumes
totaling over 2,000 pages. It was originally self-published in the form of loose-leaf
pages beginning in 1966. You subscribed to the Handbook and got pages as
Burnham finished them. This “book” wasn’t typeset; it looked as if it came
straight off Burnham's typewriter.

Most people
in the astronomy community, amateurs and professionals, immediately recognized Burnham’s
Celestial Handbook as a classic. Not everybody was completely thrilled, however,
at least not Burnham’s boss, Dr. Henry Giclas, who had hired Burnham and who was in charge of the Proper Motion Survey. Some
amateur astronomers want to paint Giclas as the villain of the piece, but he really wasn’t. By all accounts, he had a basically kindly
disposition and was well liked by his colleagues and the people of the
community. He doesn't seem to have had a very high opinion of amateur
astronomers, but that wasn’t an uncommon trait among professionals of the time.

Giclas was
irritated Burnham wouldn’t allow the Lowell staff oversight
concerning the Handbook. It was Burnham’s baby, certainly, but Giclas knew it
would become associated with Lowell Observatory, even if it didn't become an
official Lowell Observatory Publication, and he worried that any errors and
misconceptions it might contain would reflect poorly on Lowell.

The staff
was touchy in that regard, since Lowell Observatory had always had a reputation
for being a slightly goofy place. Actually,
while Bob’s book wasn’t perfect, it probably had no more errors than the
average undergraduate astronomy textbook of the day. Anyway, the Handbook was published in book
form without support from Lowell in 1979, and Burnham should have lived happily ever after.

He didn't,
and the rest of his story borders on the tragic. Who was responsible for
Burnham’s downfall? In the end, Burnham.
He knew from the beginning that the Proper Motion Survey would eventually be
completed. The friends he made at
Lowell urged him to get an education while he still had a job—he had never attended
college—but he was so wrapped up in his Handbook, his old coins, and the observatory’s
telescopes that he made no plans for the future that was rapidly
approaching.

The Proper
Motion Survey was done in the spring of 1979, and there was no money to keep
Burnham on as an observer or assistant. He was offered what was supposedly the only job available,
that of observatory janitor. Not surprisingly, he refused and left. How would
he support himself? With royalties from the Handbook, of course.

Should
Lowell have found something else for the man who’d worked for them for 20
years? Yes. There is no indication Burnham was anything but a good employee who
did what he was told for two decades. Yes, I know Lowell had a history of money
problems, and I know the NSF grant that funded Burnham ended with the Proper
Motion Survey, but I still refuse to believe something better than fraking janitor couldn't have been found for the man.

On his own and jobless, Burnham was
unrealistic about the amount of money the Handbook would bring in. As with any hardcore
amateur astronomy book there was a limited audience for it, no matter how good
it was, and thus little money to be made from it. Even today, with there being considerably
more amateur astronomers than there were in the 1980s, few of us astronomy
writers—if any—can support ourselves with just our writing. Also, not only was the
Celestial Handbook what the publishers call a “specialist book,” it was huge and
not very pretty—Burnham’s publisher did not typeset or redesign it; apparently
they just printed it from dupes of Burnham’s original pages.

There was
likely no way the Handbook’s royalties could have supported its author for long,
even in modest fashion. Not even if it had been in the hands of a mainstream
publisher, which it wasn’t. Unfortunately, apparently the only outfit who would take on the
book was Dover Publications, who specialized in reissues of other publishers’ unwanted
books and books in the public domain.

Dover actually
sold quite a few Handbooks at first, a surprising number, and Bob received some
reasonably fat checks for a while. As they inevitably do, however, the
royalty checks began to shrink. Despite that, he wouldn’t even consider looking
for non-astronomy work. He lived with a sister for several years;
always hoping his book would break big—maybe in international editions—and
bring him the money and recognition he craved.

The opposite
happened. Dover decided the way to move Burnham’s
Celestial Handbook was through the old Astronomy Book Club, who offered it
for years, usually as part of their membership sign-up come-on: you could get the three volumes of Burnham’s Celestial
Handbook for five bucks if you joined the club.

Not
unexpectedly, the book club deal further reduced Burnham’s royalties and he
began to sink further into poverty. The Astronomy Book Club did keep the book and
Burnham’s name before the amateur astronomy community, however, and that could
have been a big help if he had continued writing. In an ideal world, Bob would
have followed the Handbook with another astronomy book, piggybacked on the
popularity of his original work, and kept on trucking.

Unfortunately,
Burnham didn't have another book in him, at least not another astronomy book. As
far as I know, he never even contemplated a follow-up to the Handbook. He did
begin a Lord of the Rings-style epic
fantasy novel, The Chronicles of
Deriyabar, but it’s unclear how far he got with it, and Dover certainly
wasn’t interested in such a thing.

I believe
Bob Burnham could still have been helped at this stage. There is no doubt in my formerly military mind that he could have
got work with the astronomy magazines, done the star party circuit, and begun
to enjoy the accolades due him from his fellow amateurs. All that could have
happened and would have improved his life immeasurably, but Burnham was too shy
and isolated to reach out to anybody. He did the best he could, but was just too
dysfunctional to help himself.

He did do an
interview for Astronomy Magazine in
the early 1980s, but it had to be a self-interview;
he couldn’t face talking to a stranger from the magazine. The result was odd but nevertheless touching and
occasionally perceptive.

In 1986,
following disappointing returns from the Japanese edition of the book, which he
had counted on to turn his finances around, Burnham, whose physical and mental
health seemed to be deteriorating rapidly, left Arizona. Nobody much had any
idea where he was, what he was doing, or even who he was. Most of us amateur astronomers just naturally assumed the
author of the book we loved so much was the Robert Burnham who followed Richard
Berry as Editor of Astronomy Magazine
(a different and unrelated person). Not hardly.

Bob wound up in San Diego selling his paintings of cats in Balboa Park to
survive—barely. He was still receiving royalties from Dover, but he’d taken
enough advances to reduce his checks to truly minuscule amounts. He was just another troubled semi-homeless drifter hanging out in the park.

Despite his circumstances, Burnham never lost his love for the night sky, and would
occasionally visit the lectures and other events held by the San Diego club,
the San Diego Astronomy Association. No one there had any idea who he was, of
course.

The
denouement was that Robert Burnham died on March 20, 1993 at the age of 61, just
another charity case in San Diego’s Mercy Hospital, after being found in
distress in the park. His death was basically due to years of privation and
neglect.

It was years
before even his family knew of his passing, and more years before amateur
astronomers learned the man who wrote Burnham’s
Celestial Handbook was gone. Most of us didn't know a dadgum thing about Bob
Burnham till an Arizona New Times
(newspaper) article by Tony Ortega, “Sky Writer,” appeared in 1997 and slowly
got passed around the community.

How about
Unk and the Handbook? What’s my history with it? I’d noticed the little ads for
Bob’s loose-leaf version in the magazines, but I didn't get around to buying his
book until it had been out in three-volume form for a few years, in the
mid-1980s. How did I buy it? I am embarrassed to say it, but I did the
“Burnham’s for Five Bucks” thing with the (now long gone) Astronomy Book Club. I
plead innocent, since in them days I didn't know pea-turkey about book clubs
and publishers and the rights authors ought to have.

What did I
think? The minute I opened Volume I,
Andromeda to Cetus, I was hooked and knew this was a different sort of astronomy
book. The Handbook is inscribed, “The CELESTIAL HANDBOOK is affectionately dedicated
to all the young friends who have traveled with me to the far reaches of the
Universe.” Then comes a poem, a poem by Robert Burnham, “Midnight,” overlaid on
a nice black and white comet photo (no color inside the Handbook anywhere).

I’ve sat in
enough graduate English courses in the years since to know “Midnight” really
isn't much of a poem. The verse is awkward and the syntax and vocabulary
antiquated, but to me it is good—maybe even great—nevertheless: “Look skyward
now…/and see above…INFINITY/Vast and dark and deep/and endless…/your
heritage/Silent clouds of stars.”

That is what
Bob’s Handbook is all about; he strives to go beyond the nuts and bolts of
observational astronomy to deeper layers of meaning beyond. That is only half
the equation, though. What makes it
useful not just for contemplation in a warm den, but for observing on a cold
field, is that it is simply and sensibly laid-out and filled with information
about its objects.

After an
introduction and a couple of chapters outlining the then-current state of knowledge
in the science of astronomy, we are given the night sky constellation by
constellation. Each constellation “chapter” begins with a list of notable
double and multiple stars and a similar list of variable stars. For the larger
constellations, these star lists can obviously run on for quite a few pages.
What comes next is the meat of the book, the good stuff, beginning with a list
of the constellation’s best star clusters, nebulae and galaxies. Don’t expect
tons of objects. What you will find are brighter NGCs with a few ICs and a few
representatives from other catalogs thrown in. Andromeda, for example, has a measly
twelve fuzzies.

If that were
all there were to the book, relatively short DSO lists that include only object
designations, types, a description code not unlike that of the NGC, and an RA
and declination (1950), there’d be no reason to pick up Burnham’s today. The
simplest planning program would smoke it. What makes the Handbook valuable still
is the descriptive notes that follow the lists. These “notes” are discussions
of the constellation’s most prominent objects.

Each set of
notes includes not just a description of a star or deep sky object, but its
observational and cultural history, some of the science behind the object as it
was known to Burnham, and usually an idea of what it looks like in amateur
telescopes (which back then were often of 6 – 8-inch aperture). The notes on
the showpiece objects can be extensive, with M31’s going on for 22 pages.

While
Burnham usually (but not always) gives a good description of what an object
will look through your telescope, that is only part of the draw. In the
descriptive notes for Antares, Alpha Scorpii, for example, Burnham pulls together not just the threads of
ancient Chaldean and Egyptian astronomy, but of literature, quoting Byron, “The
mind that broods o’er guilty woes/Is like the Scorpion girt by fire.”

Even if I
don’t always get a clear picture of what Burnham’s favorite objects will look
like in my eyepiece, I always learn something from him, and often as much about
life down here as about the objects up there. Bob Burnham tended to cut himself
off from his fellow humans, but it seems his love for the stars gave him real
insight into humanity.

What else?
There are pictures. You hear complaints about reproduction quality, but it is actually
pretty good. Black and white, yeah, and on paper just this side of pulp, but
clear and most often useful. Many of the images were taken with the Lowell
13-inch camera, but there are other sources as well, including numerous shots from
Mt. Wilson/Mt. Palomar instruments. In general, the astrophotos, including the
amateur pictures, in the Handbook are state of the art for the 1970s. There are
numerous other illustrations, too, most of them good. Finally, there is an
index at the end of Volume III, but it is clearly an afterthought and not very
extensive or useful.

Many was the
cloudy night in the 1980s and well into the 1990s your old Unk spent with
Burnham’s, a pencil, and a steno pad making my low-tech observing lists and
hoping for clear skies. Burnham’s was more than that to me, though, much more.
It was a friend who saw me through hard times. Like when Daddy, The Old Man,
was in the hospital for the last time battling the cancer than took him way too
early. I sat in the waiting room reading Burnham’s, taking solace somehow in
that lonely man’s love for the eternal stars.

Today, Burnham’s Celestial Handbook has many fans in a small amateur astronomy sort of way, and some of them keep hoping it will
be updated. (Lowell astronomer) Brian Skiffwas, I understand, willing to
take on that task at one time. Problems concerning the book’s publication rights
scotched the idea, however. Burnham’s doesn't need to be updated, anyway. The
science section at the front of the book was always its weakest part and is
easy to skip. Some of Burnham’s object information in the Descriptive Notes
sections is also outdated, but usually doesn't cause much harm for the observer. Finally, while
the object positions are for Epoch 1950, it’s easy enough to get right
ascensions and declinations elsewhere.

To be
honest, I don’t want to see the
Handbook updated. This special book has meant the world to me over the years,
and I want its look and voice to remain the
same. Which doesn't mean I’d been using the Handbook frequently of late. Until
recently, I thought I’d outgrown it. Hell, it don’t even have the PGCs. Until I picked it up again the other day and
started leafing. I ain’t outgrown it.
Not hardly. How could you outgrow Shakespeare? Or Melville? Or Cervantes? And
Burnham’s Celestial Handbook is our, amateur astronomy’s, Shakespeare and
Melville and Cervantes.

What of
Robert Burnham Junior? He is known and admired by far more amateur astronomers today
than when he was alive. There’s a memorial, a small plaque, at Lowell
Observatory, and an asteroid, 834 Burnhamia, was named in his honor. But his
true memorial is his Handbook, muchachos, which I believe will live on just as The Cycle of Celestial Objects and Celestial Objects for Common Telescopes
have lived on—and Burnham’s is a far better book than either. Do I have to tell
you to go out and buy a copy if you don’t have one?

I too got Burnham's through the old Astro book club in the early 80's when I was a teenager. It and the Webb Society volumes will always be part of my library. Burnham's story is a sad one, but like you, I treasure his handbooks and the impact they had on my astronomy trek.

Rod--Burnham's is indeed a true classic. I had the privilege of accepting, editing, and publishing the self interview, and later of helping Tony Ortega's efforts to aid Burnham. At ASTRONOMY, we would have been delighted to publish (and pay for) regular contributions from him, but I think that, having completed the Handbook, he wanted to move on to other things.--Richard

Hi Rod. Great article. I've had a copy of Burnham's around since I was in the 7th grade. There was nothing else that came close to it. Sadly, I vividly recall seeing a scruffy-looking man selling paintings of cats, set up around the corner from the Reuben H. Fleet planetarium in Balboa Park. I was shocked when I later realized this was probably Burnham. It's a strange world indeed.

I, too, have a copy of "Burnham's" three volumes that I bought in that "buy for $5" deal. So sad to hear his life was so awful. I learned a vast amount from those three volumes.

Just now I walked over to the bookcase and, for the first time in maybe 15 years, opened one of the volumes. I found a "Herman" cartoon -- "Herman is an astronomer," with Herman with his head permanently back and looking up -- that I used as a bookmark.

I have all 3 original volumes i purchased new many years ago. I reread them about 2 years ago after i bought a very old refractor to restore. They have always been in a place of honor on my book shelves.

I read the "Sky Writer" article in 1998 and, like most, learned the true story of Robert Burnham. I urge everyone to look up that article, it is one of the finest examples of journalism you would hope to find.

Excellent post, Unk. I'm coming to this thread VERY late, but just wanted to note that a couple of versions of the observing list from Burnham's are available for people who want to follow in his footsteps. I had nothing to do with compiling them, but thanks to the generosity of some fellow Cloudy Nights members I got permission to post them here: http://10minuteastronomy.wordpress.com/dso-list-from-burnhams-celestial-handbook/.